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VERA
Iwoke up at sunrise. The sky was on fire, the colors stretching across the horizon in every direction. Inhaling deeply of the fresh air, I climbed out of the tent, got dressed, grabbed the basket, and headed to the part of the forest with a lot of oak trees. It had looked promising last night, but Sean had been getting weird about me picking mushrooms.
As I walked between the trees, orange caps caught my eye. Chanterelles had always been my favorites, with their flavor and firm texture. Bacon and mushrooms—breakfast of champions.
The summer wasn’t over yet, but the leaves had already started changing color. Weird. My sisters and I had escaped at around this time all these years ago, and the forest had looked perfectly green back then. There hadn’t been this many mushrooms, either, leaving us hungry.
Maybe we had just been too scared to go out looking for food. If our adoptive parents had found us, it would’ve been game over. It had been a dumb fear of mine that had prolonged our suffering. We should have gone to the authorities right away. Hell, I should have listened to Ljuba and refused to let that couple adopt us.
I picked a few more mushrooms and then headed to the tent. If I didn’t eat my loot before Sean woke up, he might get funny ideas.
As soon as I got back, I washed the mushrooms, broke the larger ones, then turned on the camping stove and put the frying pan on. The oil sizzled, and the earthy aroma made my mouth water. It had been too long since I had wild mushrooms.
Sean sprung out of the tent, grabbed the frying pan, and tossed my mushrooms on the ground.
I stared at the giant mess, mouth agape. “Those were my favorite mushrooms.”
“You can’t just pick random mushrooms in the woods and eat them. That’s how people die,” Sean said.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m a nurse. I know how people die. Now, will you please stop ruining my breakfast?”
It was a good thing I hadn’t cooked everything I had picked, but the rest of my haul wasn’t the same. It wasn’t chanterelles.
“Vera,” Sean warned.
“You already ruined my favorite mushrooms. Don’t mess with me, or I’ll rip your arm off, beat you with it, and then eat your arm instead.”
“You picked a favorite from all those?”
I glared at him. “I like chanterelles. The whole reason I wanted to go camping was because I thought I could find some, and you just threw them out.”
He looked at me, then at the half-cooked mushrooms on the ground. “Chanterelles?”
“Yeah.”
“You…” he gestured at the mushrooms he had ruined. “Right. You know what’s edible.”
“No, I just picked them because they looked pretty.” I glared at him.
“And those were your favorite?” He asked, sitting down next to me, deflated.
“They were the prettiest.”
He looked at the ones I was cleaning. “That pink one is pretty, too. What’s it called?”
Huh. I had no idea what it was called in English. “In Ukraine, we called them raw eaters.”
“Because you can eat them raw?” he guessed.
I nodded, and before I could say anything else, Sean took a piece and put it in his mouth. Big mistake. A very big mistake.
Sean’s eyes went wide as he spat the mushroom out. I handed him a bottle of water to rinse his mouth. He did, then scrubbed his tongue with his fingernails for good measure.
Remembering my own stupidity trying that mushroom raw and having my tongue go numb for a minute, I burst into laughter.
“That’s what gets you to laugh? I’m having a near-death experience here,” Sean said, but he looked a little calmer now.
“Sorry,” I said. “It can be eaten raw in Ukraine, but the strain growing in the US is obviously different. I made that mistake, too.”
